Common Market: The Lamentations of Jeremiah

The Common Market Commission’s financial vice president, Robert Marjolin, is a Jeremiah who takes any opportunity to cajole or frighten the member nations into closer cooperation and more central planning. In Strasbourg to deliver his annual economic report to the European Parliament last week, Marjolin warned the Six of galloping inflation that threatens the Market’s whole structure.

While the Market’s gross national product is rising at about 4.5% a year, salaries have soared 28% in Italy, 21% in France, 20% in West Germany. Consumer prices are up as much as 19%. Increasing imports and higher-priced exports have turned a $3.5 billion favorable trade balance into what may be a $1 billion deficit this year, and public spending, instead of staying low to counterbalance rising costs, itself rose 11% last year. Warned Marjolin, in a plea for spending hold-downs and coordination: “We cannot live in a permanent state of overheating.”